If You Stay In Philadelphia…
“Hear this, you foolish and senseless people,
who have eyes but do not see,
who have ears but do not hear…”
Jeremiah 5:21
On September 30, 1941, Mary Eldridge told Frank Flynn “You’ll never amount to anything, if you stay in Philadelphia!”
The next day, October 1, our father enlisted in the United States Navy. Japanese forces attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7. He served aboard a battleship in the Pacific, before a medical condition (We’ll return to that in the next sentence.) forced his transfer to Miami Beach.
[Seems, Daddy developed an uncontrolled and uncontrollable case of tinea pedis – “athlete’s foot.” Navy doctors recommended a transfer to Alaska hoping the cold would resolve the issue – a desperate last shot before considering amputations. SNAFUingly, (If you don’t understand SNAFU, you can Google it.) the Navy sent him to Miami Beach, where he served as a “gas rations coupon” officer and married Mary Eldridge, to whom he had mailed a proposal before leaving the Pacific.]
True story.
Ya can’t make up that stuff.
Irish-American Catholics from Philadelphia’s St. Agatha’s parish, Frank and Mary were quick to discover the prejudices of “ole South” Miami – and, in the late 1940s, it was ole South and prejudiced. (We grew up saying “Y’all” and “Ma’am” and “Sir.” At 80, I still say “Y’all.”) I’m almost certain my father’s blood pressure went through the roof every time he encountered “Catholics, Jews and Blacks need not apply” signs and he saw too many of them. The public elementary school just up the street from our home had “Black” and “White” water fountains.
Our father quickly involved himself in all things Catholic: The Emerald Society – a clever way of saying “We’re Catholic. We’re here. And we’re not leaving.” The Holy Name Society and the Knights of Columbus, which was founded in 1882 to provide life insurance benefits for the families of poor Irish Catholic men. (Today, there are more Spanish-language Knights organizations in South Florida than English-speaking “councils.”) And he was the “founder” of the “Spring Go,” a then very big “dance” (“affair”) benefiting the parish school.
Despite all that proud Roman Catholic history, I doubt our father ever really thought about Luke 10:25-37. In his honor, Jesus’ story….
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jerico…”
Luke 10: 25
Winding, bumpy, looking in some places as though it’s traversing the surface of the moon, the Jerico Road crawls just over fifteen mile from 2,500 feet above sea level and immediately outside the Old City of Jerusalem (the most ancient part of the city, which encircles places like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus) to Jerico, approximately 850 feet below sea level – a more than 3,000 feet drop. Twenty-two hundred years ago, it passed through featureless wastelands marked only by small, tribal and often nomadic communities.
“…he was attacked by robbers.
They stripped him of his clothes,
beat him and went away,
leaving him half dead.”
Luke 10: 30
We know nothing about the man. Jew. Roman. Egyptian. Greek. Yet, in Christian tradition we know he was created “in the image and likeness of God.”
“The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit…
By virtue of his soul and his spiritual powers of intellect and will,
man is endowed with freedom,
an ‘outstanding manifestation of the divine image.’”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1704 - 1705)
Tradition assumes he was a Jew.
“…A priest happened to be going down the same road,
and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
So too, a Levite, when he came to the place
and saw him, passed by on the other side…”
Luke 10: 31-32
Yet, when “a priest” and “a Levite” – possibly travelling in the opposite direct in order to perform their Levitical (religious) duties in the Temple of Jerusalem – saw him, they “passed by on the other side.” While it’s arrogantly easy to condemn them, it’s critical to recognize “the Law”:
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Say to the priests, the sons of Aaron –
say to them: ‘For a dead person no priest
is to defile himself among his people,
except for his close relative who is near to him -
his mother, his father, his son, his daughter,
his brother, and his virgin sister who is near to him,
who has no husband - he may defile himself for her.’”
Leviticus 21: 1-3
These Temple officials – religious leaders – knew the Law and may have considered both the restrictions of the Law and the possibility that making themselves “unclean” would cost them the income due their offices.
They kept letter of the Law.
“But a Samaritan, as he traveled,
came where the man was;
and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
He went to him and bandaged his wounds,
pouring on oil and wine.
Then he put the man on his own donkey,
brought him to an inn and took care of him.”
Luke 10: 33 – 34
A Samaritan…
In the time of Jesus, the relationship between Jews and Samaritans was infinitely more hostile and intense than that between the Miami Hurricanes and the “fighting Irish.” Franciscan Father Pat McCloskey, editor of the St. Anthony Messenger, compares it to the enmity between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland – a political and theological/religious odium.
Its history is made complex by the number of characters involved, but we’ll give it a shot.
King Solomon died sometime around 931 BCE; his son Rehoboam the rightful heir to the throne, was challenged by the servant Jeroboam. The ten tribes of Israel sided with Jeroboam in the north – keeping the name Israel; the tribes of Judah and the Levites, the tribe responsible for the Temple in Jerusalem, stayed with Rehoboam in the South. Each had their own kings and prophets and each was eventually overtaken by outsiders – the House of Judah in the south captured by the Babylonians and Assyrians conquered the northern House of Israel.
The Babylonian captivity of Judah lasted approximately 70 years; Israel never fully exited the Assyrian captivity.
Here’s the problem: The Samaritans, whose capital city was smack-dab in the center of the Assyrian-captured Kingdom of Israel, committed the sin of intermarrying with their captors and offering homage to some Assyrian gods. (In truth, so did members of the Kingdom of Judah with the Babylonians.)
In the ninth century, King Omri of the Northern Kingdom established Samaria as his capital; it fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE; over time, the residents who were not forced into captivity – generally farmers and working poor - intermarried with new settlers from Mesopotamia and Syria, adding fuel to the fire.
Redemptorist Father Louis F. Hartman, C.SS.R. makes the point that – by the time of Jesus – though the Samaritans were condemned by the Jews of the Southern Kingdom, they probably had as much pure Jewish blood as the Jews who later returned from the Babylonian exile. In Samaritan tradition, Mount Gerizim was the oldest and most central mountain in the world, the place where Noah disembarked after the flood, where Abraham almost sacrificed his son before divine intervention, and the focal point of their religious life. A Samaritan Temple stood on Mount Gerizim from the 5th century BCE through the 2nd century BCE. Mount Gerizim continues to be the center of Samaritan worship to the present day.
For the Jews of the Southern Kingdom (Judah), the Jerusalem Temple on Mount Moriah was the focus of worship and religious life. In the tradition of the people of Judah, this was the place where, complying with the divine instruction and before divine intervention, Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac.
“… he saw him…”
With some exceptions – the miracle of water-turned-to-wine, the curing of the hemorrhagic woman, the healing of the centurion’s servant, many of the miracles of Jesus begin with seeing the other person.
“… he took pity…”
No!
The Greek word in the original Scriptures – and the Scriptures were originally written in Greek - is Splagchnizomai!
Literally: “to have one’s bowels yearn.”
An emotional experience so profound that it is felt in the pit of one’s stomach. Not superficial, not casual, not distant. A feeling so intense that it demands immediate action!
“He went to him and bandaged his wounds,
pouring on oil and wine.
Then he put the man on his own donkey,
brought him to an inn and took care of him.”
Luke 10: 34
“He went…
He deliberately dismounted and exposed himself to robbers who might be hiding just around the bend. He dared to put another person before himself, to put someone else first.
“to him…”
To him.
To the other person. Notice, please. Jesus only speaks of “him.” Perhaps Greek. Or Roman. Or Jew. Haitian. From El Salvador. Political refugee from Venezuela or just arrived on a boat from Cuba.
It did not matter!
The Samaritan saw him and the sight of another person in agony moved him to his bowels! He felt it in his gut! In South Florida, we knew what it means to see barefoot, emaciated, sun-scorched, and desperate for freedom Cuban rafters – balseros - washing up on our shores. (Unhappily, decades later too many of those refugees – Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans - and their children are willing to deprive others of the same freedoms they now enjoy.)
“…he put the man on his own donkey…”
Jesus does not tell us where on the fifteen-plus mile road the Samaritan encountered the wounded man, but from that moment – from that place – he walked beside him.
“… brought him to an inn and took care of him.”
The parable implies that the Samaritan stayed the entire night with the beaten man. Perhaps the Samaritan gave up what would have been his own bed or didn’t slept at all because he was tending to a stranger. (We can surmise but never know, because Jesus was telling a story.) Nonetheless, the implication was that he watched over the beaten man through the night! Any parent of a sick child, any child of an elderly or sick parent, any close friend who has kept “night watch” understands “and took care of him.”
“The next day he took out two denarii
and gave them to the innkeeper.
‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return,
I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’”
Luke 10: 34 – 35
“… two denarii…”
Two Roman silver coins. The equivalent of two days’ wages!
Two days’ wages! For the vast majority of Americans, that’s one helluvalot of money!
“…gave them to the innkeeper.
‘Look after him,’ he said,
‘and when I return,
I will reimburse you
for any extra expense you may have.’”
Luke 10: 35
“… I will reimburse you.” I take responsibility. I will make you whole. I will do Justice to you.
It’s a pretty good bet that, before 1959-1960, our Irish-American Roman Catholic father from Philadelphia’s St. Agatha’s parish never heard a word of Spanish.
Yet, when the earliest Cuban refugees arrived in Miami, Daddy saw them. As he heard and learned from their stories, he yearned in his gut to help them.
Graciela, his bi-lingual secretary for almost three decades and whose husband languished for almost twenty years in a Castro prison, became so much a member of the Flynn Family that, upon his release through Spain, Don Jose’s first request was to visit “Mr. Flynn.” Sitting in my parents’ living room, he explained that it was almost two decades since he had received Communion. I grabbed my pyx (container with consecrated hosts) from the car and, when he demurred that he had not been to confession, gave him absolution and distributed Communion to our extended families.
Fred de la Rosa’s story of smuggling the diamond from his wife’s engagement ring – their only possession - out of Cuba by secreting it under her tongue “moved” my father. Mr. de la Rosa was the first Cuban salesman my father hired and Mr. Flynn often told us his Cuban salesmen “put the bread on our table.”
Blanca Lastra was our mother’s friend, confidant and hairdresser for so many years that Mrs. Flynn claimed she could “understand” what all the other – Spanish-speaking - ladies were saying under their hair dryers.
For the last decade of her life, our mother was treated with kindness, dignity and profound grace by Evelyn, Dianelys and Yiama - all recent refugees from Castro’s Cuba. They “saw” our mother. We can never say “Gracias” too many times to them.
Jesus’ story of the “good Samaritan” was provoked by an “expert in the law” who asked what was necessary “to gain eternal life” and then declared that he had fulfilled all that was required: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
When Jesus commended his answer, the young man “wishing to justify himself” asked “And who is my neighbor?”
If we listen carefully, we might hear the answer in the words of Pope Francis:
“Todos, todos, todos!!!”
“Everyone, everyone, everyone…”